The Besties - Acting Like a Bunch of Draculas in V Rising

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

This week, we're chatting about an up-and-comer on the Steam charts — the vampire survival sim V Rising. Find out why we're so smitten; with special guest Travis McElroy!Games discussed: V Rising, Everquest TLP, Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus, Vampire Survivors, Stardew Valley Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

So Travis, you're gonna be on a podcast. I've heard of them, yeah, yeah. What do you think? What's your tactic for like your first podcast? I'm just gonna, I'm gonna try to interrupt everyone as much as possible. Taco from- It's working so far.

Sorry, well, I gotta get used to this rhythm with the two of you. Okay, I'm just really excited for the three of us to be able to do a show where we don't have to play our usual roles and we can like drop the- And we can like drop the usual like relationship pretending. And did you look up all the cheat codes? Yeah. All the podcast cheat codes?

No, the game, because we, you know, we do, we talked about the game, we talk about it and we're like, I like it. I didn't like it, cool. And people give us lots of money to hear that. But then at the end of it, we're like, and here's some of our favorite cheat codes. It says at the end, it's really the last three fourths.

They're usually strats and cheat codes. Cheat codes. So do you want to share one of the cheat codes now? Oh, yeah. Just to show us that you did do your homework. Okay. If you hit A, all the money. It's A for all the money.

That's it. Yeah. It seems like someone would accidentally do that a lot. No, it hasn't come up yet. I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos. If you hit A and start at the same time, it erases the game. Why did they even build that function? And it's not just your game.

And it's not just on your computer. The whole game is gone. Wow. Off the world. Do people who made it remember it? No. It erases it.

It's a complete, it's out of everybody's brains. That's happened to, well, I know it hasn't happened to any games. Oh no. Well,

do you remember, y'all remember Porky Pig RPG? When that happened to Porky Pig RPG and it was like on top of the steam charts for like what three four years yeah and they were really remember it they were really generous with the well did you do it well no i'm in a faraday cage oh okay My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best game of the week My name is Travis McElroy and I know the best game of the week

Welcome to the Broasties Where we three brothers talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's always been like this. Chris Plant and Russ Freshstick are away, but they are still members of the Video Game Club, as are you, just by listening. We're going to talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It is a pleasure to have you here, Travis. Thank you.

This week we're going to be talking about Vrizing. Griffin, what's Vrizing? Vrizing is my cellular service provider. And they do a pretty fucking great job, if I must say so. It's no ad ad. It isn't. Vrizing is a video game, a vampiric sort of crafting survival action RPG.

And I think we're all pretty smitten with it. So I'm excited to talk. Excellent. We are going to do that and talk about some more right after this brief commercial message. This is my ideal sort of video game situation where I had not heard of this video game at all until our merch designer, Sarah McKay, popped into Slack like, y'all got to check this out. And we all checked that out.

And it really came out of nowhere, this game, I feel like. It is very weird because for the last 17 months, I've been doing a lot of Twitch stuff and I now like, you know, I'm connected to a lot of Twitch people and follow. And I hadn't seen anyone mentioned this game until Griffin was already in love with it. And so I went into it knowing it was about vampires. And other than that,

having like no context for it whatsoever. It is a vamp. Is this what people were talking about with immersive sim? This is an immersive sim, right? Kind of. So it is a rust-like. That is the genre that I usually use, which is, you know, I guess you could also call a Minecraft-like essentially. It has nothing to do with Minecraft.

No, it has nothing to do with Minecraft. Why am I different? It is much more rust more rust like only presented in a sort of top-down diablo almost moba-esque perspective can i tell you what was messing with me i can't tell if it's just the subject matter or the style but it reminds me a lot of like legacy of kane it looks yeah for sure for sure, for sure. I think that that is fair. It has this sort of grim, gothic, Nosgoth-esque sort of feel to it. I think so. But it sort of defies what I expected it,

I expected it to be a pretty straight over the plate, like Diablo, you know, looter game. But it is much, much more about going around, gathering wood and stone and other resources, building your keep, finding recipes to build even stronger axes to get even more wood faster. Let me talk about the basic, like...

Yes, please. Actually, no, Trav. Yeah? You just started earlier than we did. Talk about the first hour. Where do you begin this journey? And then Griff and I can talk about where you sort of head after that. Okay, so basically when you start,

you're in a world where vampires once reigned supreme and then were defeated by those dastardly humans. And now vampires have kind of been very much on the decline for a long time, and it's time for you to do something about it. And so you wake up, and you're your classic level one RPG person. You can swipe with your hands, and that's about it. And then you wake up in a tomb, and you're going out in the world. I would say the introduction in this game is maybe one of the best I've done in a long time,

in this game is maybe one of the best I've done in a long time. Yeah. Where it is a good tutorial that doesn't feel like I want to just click through it. But it's like the game and the tutorial at the same time. And that's especially impressive because this is a dense fucking game. Like there is a lot. And I think you could argue that the tutorial never really stops. You always have a mission objective that is like, build a castle heart to begin building your keep.

And then once you do that, it's like, okay, now you need to learn how to craft a sawmill. So you need to go out and collect these things to make a sawmill. And sometimes it's not quite that clear. You kind of have to experiment a little bit to find out how to do what it is asking you to do. quite that clear. Like you kind of have to experiment a little bit to find out how to do what it is asking you to do. But it really is a progression

that makes the game pretty impossible to put down. Basically, you start learning about combat and through combat, you learn about resource collection. And then once you've collected enough resources and completed those objectives, you're crafting armor. And once you've kind of gotten armor and weapon crafting down,

now it's time to build and then it's time to upgrade. And so it never quite, as Griffin said, it never quite feels like, oh, I finished the tutorial. Now what do I do? Like there's always a next thing. And I would say even just, I've put about maybe five hours into it at this point. And already I can tell that, so I do a of rpgs and have a lot of rpg uh history and my favorite ones are always the ones that are both like really deep and really wide and that idea of like oh yeah i could spend all my time like focusing on getting better at combat and upgrading my weapons but if i get bored with that as i often do because of adhd i can like oh you know what now i'm going to work on upgrading my keep.

Or now I'm going to – there's fishing mechanics because every game has to have fishing mechanics now. That's funny. I joked about fishing with Griffin when we first started playing and it turns out that there's actually – Yes, there's fishing in it. I mean the range of stuff is like it's a lot of – they do – it's a very, very, very smart implementation of like pretty much any vampire stuff you can think of. It's in there. Like there's a sequence of day and night where you can, at night you can run around and get all nasty on everybody. And then the daytime, you better stick to the shadows or you will burn to death.

They give you a couple seconds where you're like sizzling and it's like, oh, you better, oh, you better get to the shadows or you will burn to death. They give you a couple seconds where you're like sizzling and it's like, oh, you better, oh, you better get in the shadows. Which builds this rhythm to the game that is maybe my favorite thing about it where during the day you can kind of run from tree to tree

and chop them down or stone to stone and break it down and whenever you do the shade you were just standing in fucking disappears and so you're like, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

But like in the daytime it's really hard to go out and, you know, hunt down a boss or whatever. Yeah, because if they move into the sun, you can't get at them. You can do a ranged attack, maybe. And if, like, you get mobbed by, like, you can't run, you're running through sunlight. Yeah, you're boned. So it builds this thing where, like, during the day day you can go around and gather some resources very carefully you can go to your keep um because very quickly you develop ways to nullify the sun's powers at your headquarters so you can be a little bit more leisurely and work on you know inventory management and crafting and research and uh you know just

base building and all this stuff, which is all super strong, which is all really, really, really well thought out stuff. And when that stuff works in games, it is some of my favorite sort of moments. Yeah, dude. Once you start building your... Travis walked into my castle. I mean, when was the last time you did that in a video game where you walked into somebody's thing they made

and it's seriously like he seemed actually impressed? I was. I was honestly blunted because when I first walked into Justinin's keep and justin has been playing way longer but i walked into your keep i thought it was like an in-game pre-built structure yeah and i was like oh you built that like i mean he's got i got a treasure chest that eats gear yeah i got a servant named beef yeah that just hangs out in my house i can't command him yet because i don't have a vampire throne so he just walks around my house. Hey, what's up?

Hey, what's up? I'm beef. I think we're about roughly the same spot in the game. Oh, and there's forms. You transform into there's like a travel form. You get the first thing is like a wolf. Right away, too. Very early. That can move pretty quick. I just unlocked grandma form, which is an actual

mechanic in this game where you can turn to a grandma and hang out amongst the humans that's amazing and i i also would say like aesthetically beautiful like as we said has that gothic style but like you mentioned rust and in a lot of games like that it's like oh you're building and it's kind of like you know you got this uh it's like beat up wood and everything and i I liken this that it's like, even from the beginning, right? Even at my lower level, when I build things, it feels cool that I've built it. I'm like, yeah, look at that blood altar.

That's awesome. Especially once you get into building, like you start out building a pretty rudimentary wooden like barricade around a little enclosure. You can make something called a mist brazier, which you have to like fuel with bones. It's like an anti- an anti-campfire yeah right it's an anti-campfire uh but then once you like start building your castle and you're like oh shit i'm actually safe while i'm in here it's very cool i should also mention that the multiplayer in this game is fantastic oh yeah we have basically

i opened up a persistent server uh and all of us have been sharing it and playing on it so when you walk around our world you walk by russ's keep and sarah's keep and our keep and it's it's and you can pop in and work together which you kind of have to do once you get into the the hunts and can we can we talk about the the v blood mechanic yes i do want to talk about that i want to say one more thing about castle building i don't get into building stuff like i don't to talk about that. I want to say one more thing about castle building. I don't get into building stuff. Like I don't really care about that. Usually in most games, I'm happy to just have a big square room where all my junk is. This,

it does a really interesting mechanic where there are, there's different types of flooring that have like boosts to your equipment. So like there's like a workshop floor and that if you have put your grinder in there and your sawmill in there then you produce more resources so if you're trying to min max which is kind of the point of games like this you definitely want to do that but you can only do that with by closing off the room and putting that specific kind of flooring in there so it incentivizes from a mechanic perspective the actual design elements like yeah it incentivizes, from a mechanic perspective, the actual design elements. It incentivizes you to make these discrete spaces and make it feel more like an actual area rather than just a big storage building.

Speaking of storage, games like these are all about item and resource management and everything. And it's really nice, even early levels that it doesn't feel, it's very clear almost right away what different resources are for. So there's no like, should I hold onto this? What do I do with like, what do I do?

It's very clear right away of like, no, hold onto this stone, hold onto this, you use the plant fiber for this. And that's all, that's like daytime stuff, right? That's the daytime cycle is like getting that stuff. And then when night falls,

you can begin a hunt. I mean, I guess you can in the daytime. You can do it anytime. It's just a bad idea. It's a very bad idea. For V-Blood, which are like the bosses of the world, they are much more hardy

and with special abilities. And in like Mega Man fashion fashion if you can hunt them down and work your way through whatever camp is like protecting them and then defeat them you drain their blood and and you unlock their power that you can and recipes in your loadout and recipes and new structures for the castle right so uh the wolf that they described is the first sort of boss that you hunt down it's just a big strong alpha wolf you take him down drain his blood and now you can turn into a wolf um or there's like a big uh stonemason dude who has a power where he can smash the ground with a hammer and cause like a rift that explodes a second later uh you go through a big mine like

just slaughtering everybody along the way and then get into a pretty tough boss fight with him and then drain his blood and you not only unlock that power, you unlock like a stone mason gear for your castle. At this point you probably find yourself wondering how I unlock grandma power. Don't think too much about it. I am wondering.

Don't worry about it, it's fine. Now I will say, Griffin, hypothetically you're going through slaughtering everyone. But the other thing I will say about this as a low-level beginner player, even when you die, it's not that punishing. Right? It has a lot of— Certainly for a game like this, it could be a lot worse. You have the same pretty standard RPG mechanic of you dropped dropped all your your well not all your loot right

you hold on to like your armor and weapons and everything but any like consumable resources and stuff you drop you gotta go back and get those if you want to um but it's not like I've died many times now and there's not that feeling of like no I was oh I still could it's just more like well that's annoying now I gotta run all the way back there. I will say if we can, I mean, because we've talked for a long time about how strong this thing is, and it is very strong. It is still an early access, right? I mean, it's still early.

So there are a couple of things that I'm not like wild about. One is they're as smooth as that progression loop is. You really notice the places where it's a little bit like, uh, a little bit uneven. Um, there is a resource, uh, those unsullied hearts that you need a lot of, um, and it is not easy to come by them. So there, there were times where I got hung up for like an hour in the sort of like progression loop because I didn't have this one resource that I needed. That was sort of frustrating. I would also say that, and I would actually be curious what you think, Griff, is the, I feel like getting around is a little bit more of a pain.

It's just a little bit more annoying than I want it to be. There are teleporters. There are fast travel points, right? Yeah. But you can only use them if you basically have just your equipment. You can't use them with any items. And it's like, for a game like this, you can imagine, it is so rare. I mean, if you want to use it, you have to go to your house and dump all of your stuff and really prepare to use it.

And if you are loaded up with equipment and you're a very long way or away from your keep you are walking back you are not going to get back uh quickly which feels counterintuitive right isn't that when you would want to teleport back like yeah the map is huge too right like i have only i've not even left the it is made of a different biomes i don't think i've ever left the very first one and so some of that stuff like the unsullied Hearts is like a rare resource that drops from stronger enemies. Like you can go to an area of the map where the enemies are a much higher level

and your level is determined entirely by gear score. So if you want to be stronger, you got to build stronger weapons and armor. But like Justin said, I never want to be more than, you know, a knight's run away from my key because it's like it's just too risky. And there's certain ways around that. There are cave systems that are like shortcuts between different areas on the map, sort of chutes and ladders style.

But like they are hidden pretty well and not especially uh convenient um one thing i will say is that you can unlock a portal like a personal uh fast travel point for your keep so ostensibly you can you know dump all your stuff and then from your keep teleport out close to wherever it is that you want to hunt and then and then you know once you get the loot you are going to have to make that run back but yeah i i agree there needs to be some sort of middle ground because right now like once you're out of danger you should be able to just take your stuff back without having to walk yeah and maybe there's like a maybe there's a bat form that you want i i don't know maybe maybe we haven't gotten you have to imagine right well they're right they do do an interesting job of ameliorating some of those challenges which may be the bat form if that exists i i've tried

to not google stuff you really don't have to yeah much i mean it's pretty self-explanatory uh for example you find gear that offers you sun protection so it can like give you more time um in the sun before you burst into when you're sizzling yeah exactly a little crispy um that that loop though really makes this game have have that vampire feel in a way that i do not think a game has had since the like legacy of kane era uh i cannot think of another sort of and i've never played like masquerade the bloodline but that is like a totally different genre than than what this game is but being able but starting out as this wimp who can't do anything and bursts into flames every few hours or so uh and going from that to you know the owner of a massive castle who goes out at night and just terrorizes the land is fucking sick.

A real bootstrap vampire. Very, very, very cool. And the number of carrots on sticks that this game provides is, like, outrageous. Yeah, I will say, so here's another thing, and this might just be me being dense, but it took Justin telling me when we played together earlier. So there is a feeding system, right, that to me is as much as they do great in that beginning kind of path of saying, like, this is how crafting works. This is how this works. Right. This is how this works, right? I spent probably the first two hours of playing, maybe three hours, thinking that feeding should be healing me, right?

I'm going to eat. That's not how it works. And along with that, so basically different bad guys, or maybe you're the bad guy. Good guys. But different feeding targets have different kind of stats. So one might be a rogue, one might be a brute, one might be, I think there's like warrior. There's a creature. Creature, right. And depending on what blood type you're currently like housing, right, you get buffs from it.

But the confusing thing is, and maybe this will change out of beta, but right now, when you look at someone, it'll say like, you know, brute 13%. Right? And so my thinking looking at that is like, oh, I need to fill up to 100%. But actually, it doesn't stack. It's like if you have 15%, don't feed on somebody with 4% or you'll move down to 4%. It is a, I imagine some people will get into this game maybe because of this discussion. And so like to clarify it, because I don't,

it's the one thing that I feel like the game really does not set up well. Those different percentages is essentially the potency of their blood type, right? So if you find a worker type with 4% and you feed on them, every time you feed it fills up your blood meter which is essentially your mana right it's what powers your different vampire skills when you cast uh the spells that you unlock from the bosses uh i think when you transform into

different forms it uses some of that mana right um so you can do that with whatever right you you start fighting a deer you get it weak enough you get like really weak creature blood right but if you're going through like a big camp and you find a big strong brute who's at like 60 and you drain him you're gonna fill up your mana and then you're also going to get all of these like different brute benefits and there's like a little icon you can hover over that shows you the different it's sort of a class think about, but rather than like leveling up the class, you just find like a better rogue or a better warrior and eat them. Or a worse one.

You have to be careful though, because this is one where I can't tell if this is annoying because it's like something that doesn't work or it's like a frustrating and that's part of the game. But when you feed on someone, you are still vulnerable to attacks, right? So you could be fighting a big group and there's a 60% brute, right? That you really want,

but there's like eight other guys hitting you and he's the strongest one hitting you. So it's either like keep taking damage from him. I like this system. It took me a while to come to terms with it, but I like it because there's like a lot of trade-offs like travis said in that scenario now all of a sudden the combat in this game is pretty simple so i like things that make it a little bit more complicated so in that scenario you have to just dodge around this big brute and kill all of his friends so that you can

save him for last and have yourself a little snack or to make him your your thrall which is another another tasty tasty option but like the whole system is a trade-off where you know you're about to take on a camp you're running low on blood which you use for all of your powers you use it to heal you can channel your blood into healing power essentially um but if you do that you're going to lose all these dope benefits right so i built my keep fairly close to a mine where there are a lot of worker types who i love to eat because they make it so that when you go around collecting stone and wood you can do it faster you get more resources out of it so when i'm in base building mode that is my first thing i do is i go and drain

drain a worker i run around and collect a bunch of shit i'm not spending a bunch of blood doing that but then if i get into a bunch of fights you know and my blood starts to get kind of low it becomes a question of well do i want to bail so that i can keep this like production power or am i going to need to fill up just so i can survive this battle it's i i think it's a cool system it is it is annoying sometimes it's not super well explained yeah it is not super well explained and so much of it is is so slick in that regard right i am really interested because i have no idea the scope of this game like i there are so many bosses that are ahead of me um you unlock a lot of different magical powers and it really doesn't make a big production out of it when you do so there's i routinely will go into like the powers menu you can have two sort of equipped on a hot bar that are like your combat abilities um and then you have basic vampire abilities that are on a sort of wheel that you can access but like you have a dash you have a dodge

also ability that you can unlock sort of different versions of so the one i have now like coats me in this green light that makes it so that my next melee attack i kind of throw out it's which is pretty fucking cool you get a lot of those powers you don't always know when you got a new one um you have to kind of go look um but i have no idea like there's so it seems like there could be so much these other forms too like yeah i don't know it seems like there could be so much of these other forms too. Yeah. I don't know. It seems like there could be a lot of different things. It's a very good – it is very surprising how often it gives you that sense of like I'm really just like a vampire in these woods. Yeah. The first time I hit a blood moon, when you hit a blood moon, you get like super powered and you're stronger and better and it's great.

And like that happened. I was like, oh, hell yeah. And there was like resources that I hadn't been able to mine before because my attack level, my level is too low. But when you're a blood moon, it's like, yeah, man, go get that stuff. And it feels good. It is a great moment too when you're like on the ropes in a fight that you shouldn't have picked because it was the daytime. And then all of a sudden the moon rises. You're like, uh oh.

The opposite happens too. In the middle of a fight you're about to win, then it's like, oh, there's the sun, gotta go, bye, sorry. Bye, you don't see me. What is that very gamey term for like, the stories that come out of this thing are really fucking, really fucking cool. Like I built my keep pretty close

to this like fast travel portal and it's in this big clearing so I can expand my- Emergent. Emergent gameplay, right? And so I was like having a good time and then Russ got on and I was like, let me show you my keep, it's dope. And he came over to my keep and together,

we were on a clan together, which means we can help build each other's shit and have access to all each other's shit, is very cool but then we started to build into my backyard and a tree ant who is like a really bad boy uh and really really tough and he started to just wreck my shit and smash my castle and was really bad and so what we had to do was this spawn point was permanent right behind my house and so what we had to do was this spawn point was permanent right behind my house. And so what we had to do was I sent Russ out there to go and attack him and then run away and train him away from my house. And while he was gone, I paved over his spawn point to keep him from coming back. And it was like a really cool, like, it was a really cool sequence of events.

Very early on, I was getting chased by like some like skull level to me, you know, humans. And I was running through the forest and a tree ant popped up and he was skull level to me, but I ran past them and then they attacked each other. Yeah. And I like came back and there was just loot all over the ground and they

were all dead. And I was like, yeah, really good. I, I, this is one of my games of the year i am i and and the the idea that this huge thing that i'm very excited by and seems very fleshed

out already is only in early access is like is is is genuinely thrilling um because this is a this is a a definite sleeper hit for me and yeah they've gotten the importance of down the fun the fun is there already. And just building out from it, I think, is so... There's so many other cool things they can do with it. I can't wait. And it has the room to expand outward instead of just, like,

we're going to add more stuff to the middle, right? Like, there are a lot of games where when they want to add new stuff, they have to, like, either change out things that are already in it or just, like, keep piling more on top of the game where i could see this being like well we're gonna add more bad guys out here and now more to the map and there's you know more customizable thing like there's so much room

on the edges for it to expand out yeah it's not just the numbers get bigger it like because that does happen and it's very satisfying to watch those numbers get bigger. But there's so much other cool shit that, that you, you learn and unlock and upgrade and, and everything. I want to say one last thing,

just as a big, like a vampire lore nerd person, there's one little thing. And it's like, when you are putting stuff into a, into a chest, there's a button that says compulsively count, which is a thing with vampires that doesn't often get talked about. But one of the things in Vampire War is like if you spill rice in front of them, they have to stop and count it.

Oh, really? Or it's like coins. They have to. They can't not count. I did not know that. I wondered why that button was called that. That's part of count from Sesame Street. Yeah. In addition to being a pun, it's also like a thing. That's great. I wondered why that button was called that. That's part of Count from Sesame Street. Yeah. In addition to being a pun, it's also like a thing they punched in.

That's amazing. Yeah. And they just put that in and it's just such a good, like, they know, like, they paid attention. You can pick up silver coins and then this alert comes on the screen. It's like, you're holding silver. You're dying. So then you have to run back to your base like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Chow, chow, chow, chow.

No, no, no, no, no. You can't turn into a wolf form when you have silver coins because it's constantly damaging you and damage breaks you out of wolf form. So now it's like, I killed this trader. I got these coins. I still don't know what you spend them on, but I'm assuming you can spend them on something.

Well, okay, Griff, once you're a human, you can interact with the trader and buy shit from him. That's awesome. I'm just a grandma. You can't trade with me and buy shit from him. That's awesome. I'm just a grandma. You can't trade with me. I want Twinkie. Do you have any unsullied hearts? No reason.

No reason. It's fry pie. Don't worry about it. For the kids I have. That's so fucking cool. God, what a fucking cool game. It's really great. Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and talk some more with our special guest,

Travis Patrick McElroy. So, Trav, what are your best games? Like, best games ever? Yeah. Well, you know, I think the game that holds the dearest place in my heart is GoldenEye 64. I thought you were going to say, for sure,

Civilization Revolution. Oh, Civilization. There are games, to me, that are, are like the pinnacle of that genre. Like when I think about a game that I could go back to over and over again, it's civilization. But when I think about probably the game that I, as a kid, most said like, oh, I like this. like, oh, I like this. It was a golden night for me because, one, it was the first, well, one of the first, if not the first,

like four-player, multiplayer, same-screen kind of deal. But it also rewarded as much strategy as it did, like, your ability to aim and your reflexes and stuff. And you could, you know, move, you could perform better in levels by planning it out. And it wasn't just like, well, how quickly can you hit the trigger? And that's what matters. I cannot fathom how much time we spent

just doing like proximity mines in the temple. Oh yeah. Like probably a couple hundred hours of just that game mode with the three of us and, you know, one of our friends usually. Well, and then being able to say like, okay, well, let's develop a new mode, you know, where it's just like,

as long as you're unarmed, like as long as you don't have a weapon, you're fine. But as soon as you karate chop, you're freaking, like the ability to like develop house rules. Rules of engagement. Yeah, man, like that.

I would also say like my, the video game, and this is such a dorky thing to say but the dork the the video game for me that was like oh video games are art uh will always be bioshock that i remember standing in i was like the first house sydney and justin lived in uh after they got married and like we were having like a cookout or something and justin brought me in to show me bioshock and i remember like standing in his living room watching you know the bathysphere go down and it opens and it's like that's why i built rapture and like that moment i was like oh wow like this

is as pretty as any movie i've ever seen well and fucking cool like yeah i feel like i feel like the themes of Bioshock have maybe not aged particularly well. Interesting. But, I mean, if you were on the ground floor of that thing. Griffin, are you saying that? Are you maybe insinuating that man is not entitled to the sweat of his own breath? Interesting. No, says the man in Austin. So, bro.

Interesting. No, says the man in Austin. But to me, it was like the immersive environment where, like, man, it's also, there are games, right, that are, like, scary and, you know, horror games. But Bioshock was maybe the most tense I've ever been playing it, even when nothing was happening, right? You just walk into a room and the lights will flash and suddenly there's like a body on the floor and you're like, I hate this, right? It's like up there with like Myst and Riven, where it's just like, sometimes nothing's happening and you're just scared playing it, right?

Like that kind of feeling. And I was so into that. All of the Bioshock games and any game like this where it is on, I mean, you're moving, there's a set pathway, but it feels like you're exploring the world as much as you want. I'm a sucker for that, man.

Every time. Trav, have you been playing anything else lately? So much Stardew Valley. I love that. I love that. Honestly, it was the kind of thing, for me, a lot of games, and this is true of movies and TV shows too, but there will be games that I will start to play, whether it's circumstances in my life or just,

with ADHD, hyperfixation is a really big part of it. Yeah. And if I'm hyperfixated on something, a game or a movie or whatever, and another game comes out that's like yeah i would absolutely love that but that is not i don't have room for it right now and stardew valley was just like i i had bounced off it i think twice before and this time was just the right set of circumstances and i think it was because it was streaming that i played it on a stream. And so I was getting feedback from people.

It was like having the Nintendo Power Helpline right there with me saying like, oh, do this. Oh, go talk to this person. I wouldn't worry about that yet. It's the only way to make Stardew Valley pleasurable is to have a hive mind of people. Indeed.

Telling you what to do. And once that happened and I could get a grasp on, oh, I see that. Okay, now I know this is important in this manner. I couldn't put it down. It also helps that Teresa and BB and Dot all like watching it, right? So it can be, it's a rare game that, like, I like playing that there's no worry of, like,

oh, this might be a little too violent or it's too loud. It's too chaotic. Anything like that. Right? They also like watching me play Fortnite, but then they make fun of me when I do bad. And Dot, the two-year-old, can be so cruel. And she's like, look at you. She really says mean stuff. Oh, my God.

It's terrible. One time I got a Victory Royale and she was like, took you long enough. Yeah. Whoa. It was biting, man. I just started trying to get bb bb has watched a lot of like roblox videos um so like she wants to play it get out of there trap well yeah she's not quite ready mechanically but what she really enjoys now that i really love watching her play is like ios games um where it's just like walking around in a little town and there's like different like buildings you can walk into and play the

bakery game and then you go to a different one and it's the farm game but it's all in the same app are you in that sega you're in that sego mini world shit no i need to get into that right now it's my dude like she just loves cookie world c oh man get in that right now. It's Cookie World C, my dude. Like, she just loves Cookie World C. Oh, man. Get in that Sega Mini stuff. It's good. There's like 30 games in there, and they're all, like, pretty cute. I'm trying to think. So I'm also, I would say I'm a sucker for the Assassin's Creed series.

Yeah. One, because, man, I like a game that I think I kind of touched on this with GoldenEye, but any game where it's just like, well, take a second and like develop in your head what's the coolest way I could do this. So like that, Assassin's Creed, Dishonored, anything where it's just like, okay, I think I figured out that I'm going to jump off the top of this, land on top of that dude, and then I'm going to swing off of this thing and no one will see me do it and i'm gonna feel like a shadow who just moved through the world and killed on my whims right like that to me is very satisfying i think maybe i have a dark passenger that can

only be fed by assassins creaking yeah yeah this is not news to me um but also rpg game i mean this this is uh v rising is really uh like scratching an itch that I've had for a while now, which is like a nice bite-sized RPG. Because I did get the new bites. I get it. Like I tried Final Fantasy, what's the one, Griffin? Yeah, and I really liked it. But, oh, man, you get dropped into the middle of like so much hey yeah that brings me actually that makes me think v rising what do we think about that as a title i do not care for it

i don't think it's great right it's not a great title it seems like you should have the word vampire in there maybe just vampire vampire rising i don't that's a good name somebody said that in a meeting and was like i think we can make it punchier. Yeah, what about VR? No. That's too short. What about vamprizing? No.

I don't think that's it. Vrising? Doesn't that sound like a, it's already on the box. Let's go. Let's go. It's on the, I don't know that there is a box. Oh, yeah. They don't do boxes.

Man, not too long ago, you guys were talking about, like, Babbage's, and that blew my mind. I thought about going to a store to, like, buy a computer game. It's wild to me. I've been collecting, like, you know, retro games and shit for, I mean, forever. And it is, with every year that passes, when I look at that collection, the more, like, insane it is that physical media was so big and chunky and the law of the land and everything because i don't do that anymore i have not bought a physical game in

yeah many moons i think the last time i did it was fallout 76 because i was so excited yeah and i got like a whole lot of i bought like the collector's edition and then i like a metal box yeah i think persona 5 was the last time i did it where i wanted like the special bag that came with it um okay griffin anything else that you have been playing lately yeah baby uh two big ones i want to talk about the first is vampire survivors as long as we are there he is welcome welcome holy shit uh i did not it did not click with me i think i played it once or twice where i had like a couple short rounds and i was like oh okay this is neat i get why people like this and then i had one run where i went almost like a half hour and was just a demigod by the end of it.

And I had collected several thousand gold. And then of course I got massacred by the Grim Reaper who comes out after you hit the time limit. But then I had unlocked like 12 new weapons and a couple new characters. Did we talk about it already? Did we already give the pitch on this? It's basically, it's a one stick shooter that is heavily inspired by castlevania yes

it's literally just you you you move around a battlefield your weapons automatically fire some of them go toward the nearest enemy some of them like the knife power up from castlevania you just throw it straight in front of you uh but you just move with one stick or with WASD and you collect the experience that your enemies drop. And every time you level up, you get another power or an upgrade to a power you already have. Oh, so you're just trying to survive.

You're just trying to survive, that's it. It's very, and you get, the sense of power that you get in each run is wild. And then you also collect this gold that you can use to get more permanent it's also kind of like the one six shooter is not a bad but it's it's more like um a tower defense game except you're all the towers oh and you move and you can move oh not at all like a tower defense game but you you're the tower. I get it. I did the review for Polygon.

I think I said that. I get it. I also want to mention, because I didn't realize we were doing this part of it, but Evil Dead, the game. Oh, yeah. Tell us about that, because I don't know anything about it, but you've been talking about it a lot. As far as I could tell, pretty much came out of nowhere. And anytime you're dealing with like ip games especially like uh what seems like a bit of a cash-in because there's several evil dead an army of darkness

games at this point but this is an amazing like multiplayer uh it's got kind of a left for dead feel to it um where like you know you're a team of survivors get dropped in the middle of the woods and you have various quests uh that you have to complete and as you do there's like hordes you know of different uh it might be like skeletons or zombies or demons different kinds of enemies that are coming to try to kill you right and you're going around and it also has a bit of like dead by daylight to it where you're like collecting you know stuff as you go but you're going around and it also has a bit of like Dead by Daylight to it where you're like collecting, you know, stuff as you go, but you're collecting weapons and you're like trying to find healing potions. And there's like four different classes of characters you can play. Each one has different skill sets.

And then within those classes, there's different characters you can play. And each of those characters has different special abilities that make you useful as a team there's cars you can drive in it right which already is like a huge add to a game for me and you're going from here big gear big gear head over here um but like then as you complete these tasks the enemies are getting harder and harder their level is increasing over time you're trying to upgrade your weapons. And also, man, this is one of my favorite parts about it. If you choose to play as, like, Army of Darkness Ashe, you can find chainsaws to attach to your arm.

And, like, now you are. Why would you do that? Why would you always do that? Yes, this is what I'm saying. But other players can't use the chainsaw. Only Army of Darkness Ashe. First to click Ashe at the character select screen. This is what I'm saying. But other players can't use the chainsaw, only Army of Darkness Ashe. First to click Ashe at the character select screen. This is what I'm saying, right?

And it's just like, why wouldn't everyone always want to be that character? And then you also can earn level up points as you play these matches and upgrade the hero characters you're playing. And because it is multiplayer, you can also play as the demon, right? Or the skeleton or whatever the bad guys are.

So my question is, does somebody control the bad guys? They don't have to. You can play against AI, but you can also play just like random match, just like Dead by Daylight, where somebody is the killer and everyone else is the survivors. And man, I tell you what,

I've only played one match with like a human um killer oh boy just whoop oh got me so good you guys um yeah but it is one pretty beautiful um really like well the the style of it the art of it is really great it is so satisfying. It is so satisfying. The melee combat is satisfying, which is hard to nail, but it's really important in like a horde zombie game. And it's really satisfying and it's really fun to play with people.

And like, it's so good. And like, it blew me away how good it is. Because Evil Dead games have been, historically, pretty dog shit. Yeah. I remember I watched those movies for the first time in the early aughts. And then I believe it was THQ's Evil Dead A Fistful of Boomstick came out. I was like, fuck yeah, let's go, baby. And then I played it, and it made me so sad.

Can I tell you one of the things that is maybe one of the smartest things i've ever seen in a especially based off of an existing ip game like this but when you know you're dealing with like evil dead and army of darkness where so much of it is about like there's quips and there's one-liners and stuff right people are still delivering lines and quips and stuff but but they are quiet and proximity-based. And, like, if I'm, you know, 100 feet away from Ash, I'm not going to hear him say anything, right? So it is not like, and now it's going to dominate your headphones to listen to this funny quip from this guy. It's just a little bit of flavor in there as you're running around focusing on the actual game, right?

That's cool. It's environmental, and it feels like you're actually, like, you know, running around focusing on the actual game right so it's environmental and it feels like you're actually like you know running around with these people and it's really satisfying to play like it's one of those where i went into it uh my my friend cooley smiley invited me to play and i was like okay knowing nothing about it and i was like i could play this for eight hours straight like because it also it has that combination too of as you level up and get more powerful right that makes you better but also just understanding the mechanics and the map and like how to like move from place to place better

and the strategy of like okay we're gonna stop and fight here or like just loot and keep going is also how you get better and And I love that in the game. I wanted to say my second game is EverQuest because... Oh my God, Griffin. Listen, I can talk about this. How dare you? Today, actually, the day we're recording this, they are launching a new couple,

actually new what they call time lock progression servers, which essentially start you at classic, no expansions ever quest uh and then every like like i think six to twelve weeks they add on one of the expansions in order uh and on on top of all that it is not like exactly classic ever quest like that game has had you know it is still extremely obtuse i think compared to a world of warcraft or final fantasy which are more uh user friendly um but there have been a lot of like quality of life changes like there's an in-game map you don't need the fucking you don't need the

ever quest atlas at your side sitting on your desk as you play through to know how to get to South Road. That's for noobs. It's for fake gamers. And I am. Listen, if you've never skipped church to sit there with Dave Matthews Crash playing on your boombox as you just got it for Christmas, as you run across the salt marshes, what are you even doing? Right. I am excited. So I've been playing it a little bit just to kind of like jog my memory a bit before this new server launches today. But I am really excited. This game was a big part of my childhood, but I was too young to really get it, to like really understand how this game worked and how to play it. But despite that, like I loved it and I loved playing with everyone. Like we were all pretty into that game. And so I'm excited to like go into it as an adult and have that stroll down memory lane.

And if you wanna join me, Yellenac launches today at, well, I don't know what time, but come get at me. Let's get in there. Let's take down the sleeper together. Get some crush bone belts. Get those crush bone belts. Get those crush bone belts.

Get those crush bone shoulder pads. A lot of people forget about the shoulder pads. That's true. And let's do this thing. That's it. Juice? All right. Yeah.

I've finished Who Pressed Mute and Uncle Marcus. So if you are looking for a fun... Shut up. If you're looking for a fun... I thought... I was laughing because I thought you were going to say, so if you're looking for a fun I thought I was laughing because I thought you were going to say

so if you're looking for some pro strats you're looking I'll just tell you who did it no it's really it's a really

interesting thing if you want an FMV game I talked about it last week in depth so go to that but it's an FMV trivia game

where you're also trying to solve your uncle's attempted murder is the trivia an actual focus of it that's what i wanted to ask the last time you talked about it but you couldn't because you were just yeah i was just driving in my car no it is i mean it doesn't really matter in the sense that like good or bad is kind of dependent on who you're talking to so like some people want to win more and some people want to win less but the trivia is a lot of it's focused on the actual people oh so like it's

questions about me or you know the the one guy who's focused on like empathy or your mom sings uh bits from classical pieces and you have to guess the classical piece that she's singing right so um it's it's it's cool it's it's a good video game if you like video games uh next week we don't have any emails for you because i think russ usually pulls those together maybe chris we don't know where uh we don't know where they we don't know what our email address is but uh next week we're going to be talking about e3 what is what the future oh boy past and all of it for e3 which is not happening this year but it's still kind of going to happen I bet uh and and so that'll be that'll be next week Travis

where can people find more of your great work oh that's such a good question uh I stream on twitch is the Travis McElroy uh if you're listening to this this weekend I'm going to be at Phoenix Fan Fusion uh so check out my Twitter at Travis McElroy and I'll put my schedule and stuff there excellent we talked about V Rising obviously Stardew Valley, Evil Dead, Vampire Survivors

EverQuest, Time Locked Thing Who Pressed Me to Uncle Marcus and those are the games we're talking about next week E3 until then join us again next time for the best games because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!